There’s a debate intensifying among political analysts on whether North Korea is heading down a suicidal course by continuing to develop nuclear weapons. On the…
There’s a debate intensifying among political analysts on whether North Korea is heading down a suicidal course by continuing to develop nuclear weapons.
On the surface, North Korea and its supreme leader Kim Jong Un seems to be succeeding in its calculated risk of defying UN sanctions and circumventing the oil embargo. In January, Russian president Vladimir Putin declared “Mr. Kim Jong Un has obviously won this round. He has missiles of global reach, up to 13,000 km, which can reach almost any point of the globe.” The Russian authorities seem to believe that this “shrewd and mature” leader will succeed in facing down his “imperialist enemies” by manufacturing intercontinental ballistic missiles that can threaten every major city and military base of the US and its allies.
But these experts are overlooking the self-destructive impulse that underlies North Korean bravado. The question arises as to whether Kim’s regime would be willing to risk annihilation when options for negotiations exist, at least in theory.
Anyone who has studied the North Korean power structure knows that Kim Jong Un himself is being pressured by generals preoccupied with the humiliation of the Korean War. In fact, their views on suicidal attacks in some ways resemble the propaganda that the Japanese military disseminated during WWII. A North Korean defector recently revealed that the military has assembled a brigade of suicide bombers who are ready to attack the enemy with armed “nuclear backpacks” if the situation becomes desperate.
As much as North Korea and Japan despise each other, there are striking parallels in their attitudes toward suicide.
